Archive for September, 2008

God bless capitalism. I mean, I like a good ice cream just like the next guy but good gosh….who is gonna pay $8.00 for a simple ice cream cone??? Well, evidently, quite a few people will. It’s the same with coffee at Starbucks and I just don’t understand it. Well, scratch that. What I don’t understand is when people talk about saving money or how they are just making ends meet or they whine about how they wish they could afford this or that yet they hit the Cold Stone Creamery once a week and Starbucks three times a week. Ok, where in the world are your priorities?

The wife and I go to Baskin Robbins maybe once a month or so but they have reasonable prices. Why would we go to Marble Slab and pay, sometimes, twice as much?

Sometimes I wonder just how much some of these people actually have in their savings.

“No one knows what to do. We are in new territory here. This is a different game. We’re not here playing soccer, basketball or football, this is a new game and we’re going to have to figure out how to do it.”

Huh. Great to know that you Democrats have someone up there who is smart, intelligent and knows what he’s doing. Where is Matt Damon on this? He is so scared about Sarah Palin becoming VP but doesn’t seem to care that the Majority Leader now hasn’t a clue.

Ok, just a little little observation about the times and how they are a changing. Some of the best memories I have as a kid are sleeping out in the backyard. We would set our tents up during the day in the summer while our parents were at work then that night we would bring our comic books, sleeping bags, pop, chips, candy and playing cards and pile into the tent for the night. About 12:00 or 1:00am we would get bored and set out for some walks thru the neighborhood. Hoping thru backyards, walking down the middle of empty streets, heading to 7-11 for some refills on candy….it was a blast. Finally, we would crash back in the tent about 3:00am. I am pretty sure at least some of our parents knew we were gone but they were ok with that.

Now, we didn’t destroy things (sure, we may have egged a house or two) or steal anything. Anything we may have did was pretty minor. We just had fun being together and sleeping out (in the big city, you don’t get out to the country too much so this was our “adventure”).

Now, contrast that with today. No WAY am I letting my kids sleep out like that. Sure, they can sleep out but they better not leave the backyard. No way would I let them wander the neighborhood, especially if I still lived up in a suburb of Detroit. Not only would I fear for their safety from the perverts, drug dealers and crazies out there these days but also, today, “fun” is not so innocent. It’s more like setting cars on fire, breaking into homes, getting drunk and jumping girls. Not that I would think my kids would do anything like that, but the people who would do things like that are out there with them.

Isn’t it strange how times change so fast? When I talk about this, the time frame is the late 70’s early 80’s when I was a kid and sleeping out. Can you imagine your 10 or 12 year old out, walking the streets of your neighborhood at 1:00am these days?

John McCain (and Obama for that matter), have it all wrong. Here is what McCain has to say about the economic situation:

“We are going to fight the greed and irresponsibility on Wall Street. These actions [leading to crisis] stem from failed regulation, reckless management and a casino culture on Wall Street. … We need strong and effective regulation … “

No, that is what got us in the mess to begin with. How much you wanna bet Govco will soon be telling CEO’s how much they can make? How soon before it trickles down to you and I? if anything, Govco needs to get out. Leave it to the private sector. It will sort out.

No, I’m not talking about zero regulation. That is the typical response. You say we need less Govco and the crazies out there say “No government? It will be anarchy!!!”. Of course fraud and such needs to be regulated and prosecuted however, simply because I, as a business owner, made some bad mistakes, should Govco (meaning you and I) bail them out?

YES! It’s the last season….FINALLY!!!! My very first post on this blog was about medical dramas and how we need a moratorium on them. How every single one of these is exactly the same. I just wanted a good ten year moratorium on any new ones. ER is different though. I stopped watching it probably eight or nine years ago when it jumped the shark. I can’t believe that it lasted as long as it did. When they lost just about all their originals and then had to make the one Doc a Lezbo, I knew it was time to quit.

All that being said…finally we are seeing the last season. Good riddence. Let’s get some original shows back on like Arrested Development.

The two things ER still had going for it was 1. No laugh track and 2. Maura Tierney (she’s hot!).

Anyway, let’s hope that my call for a moratorium on hospital dramas will stay in place and there won’t be any sort of “replacement” for ER.

“These two entities – Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – are not facing any kind of financial crisis…the more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”Representative Barney Frank (Democrat, MA)

”I don’t see much other than a shell game going on here, moving something from one agency to another and in the process weakening the bargaining power of poorer families and their ability to get affordable housing,” Representative Mel Watt (Democrat, NC)

Did you know that in 2003 President Bush proposed more oversight on Fannie and Freddie? Did you know that the above quotes are from what the Liberals thought of his proposal? What a joke. I mean, these same Democrats last week said “Blame? Who? Us? No way. this is ALL the fault of President Bush.” Facts don’t lie and the above quotes say it all. Back in the 90’s, under Clinton, these same Liberals pushed for looser lender guidelines and all but threatened Lenders if they didn’t start lending more.

This is not so much a moratorium on something as it is a question of why. Why don’t more states have the bottle/can deposit such as Michigan? I grew up in Michigan and, unlike other states, you rarely saw bottles and cans along the side of the road due to the .10 refund you would get when you returned it to the store. That was such a great way to cut down on trash along the roadways. Plus, it’s a great way for kids to “earn” some money. I remember lugging bottles up the store to get some money for a Slurpee or candy or to play some video games. Yeah, my parents paid the upfront deposit but they never liked having to take the returnables back so it was left to us kids.

Anyway, I thought of this as I was taking a walk in my neighborhood today and saw bottle after can after bottle on the side of the road, in the pond or in the woods.